The ROI Of Gluten-Free Cereal

In the past two months, traffic to this blog has increased exponentially. Average daily views for the month of March was 36% higher than it was in February, which was 25% higher than in January. That’s a 144% increase (36%/25%) in blog traffic in just two months!

I was struggling to figure out what was causing this increase. I certainly can’t credit it to higher quality blog posts: I published the same lousy crap in March and February that I published the previous 12 months. I didn’t do anything different in how I (lamely and shamelessly) publicize my blog posts.

Then it hit me: At the beginning of the year, my wife stopped buying the crappy, unhealthy cereal that I like to eat and made me start eating gluten-free cereal.

It tastes like crap, but that’s the ONLY THING that’s changed in the past three months.

Therefore: With all other things being equal, the change in blog traffic must be due to gluten-free cereal.

The downside to this is that it doesn’t help me to convince my wife that I should go back to the old cereal that I liked. I’ve tried telling her that the additional cost of gluten-free cereal (this shit is expensive — I’ve bought weed cheaper than this stuff) wasn’t paying off.

But I was wrong. Clearly it is paying off.

Now, although I don’t advertise on my blog, or generate revenue one way or another from my blog, the increase in blog traffic means that awareness of Ron Shevlin has increased since the beginning of the year, and although I can’t put a dollar figure on that, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an ROI on that (at least, according to the social media gurus whose blogs generate 100x the traffic mine does).

Bottom line: I’ve experienced a huge ROI on my investment in gluten-free cereal (144% ROI, to be exact). This means, that you too, will experience a huge ROI if you invest in gluten-free cereal.

p.s. If you think this analysis sounds ludicrous, try substituting “social media” for gluten-free cereal. If your CEO and CFO are worth the big bucks they’re getting paid, they’ll see through your shallow attribution analyses. It’s your career and credibility. Do what you want.